Like a Baroness
by stefanie bean
Summary: Ever wonder about Meg Giry's marriage to the Baron de Castelot Barbazac? These three vignettes explore it. They take place in the same universe as Phantoms of the Past, and are based on Leroux. Not in time order. Rated M.
1. Soldier Girl

**Soldier Girl**

(based on a drabble written for **mydaroga**)

If the Baron de Castelot-Barbezac had been a religious man, he would have put off going to confession for the year until the early morning hours of Ash Wednesday. The churches of Paris, great and small, would bring on this night priests from all corners, from the remotest refectories, to fill the dusty and mostly-unused confessionals in the last remaining Shrovetide hours. But the Baron had no interest in matters of religion, and so he spent that solitary hour of the last night of carnival waiting at the bottom of the grand stairs of the Paris Opera.

Here she would be, Erik had said. _How will I know her?_ the Baron had asked. Earlier that evening, the two men had crowded into a dark corner of the empty opera box where they had agreed to meet. The box's gaslights were set to their highest point, and the Baron had never been that close to Erik before. With a kind of sickening fascination, he noticed that Erik wore some kind of half-mask of skin-like material over most of his face, and that his prominent nose and moustache were artificial.

Whatever strange prosthetic covered him, it didn't obstruct his eyes. Erik had opened a small compact mirror and added some lampblack to the deep dark rings surrounding his eyes, squinting at his companion over the enameled lid. _You will know her when you see her_, Erik had replied. The dark rings circling around his golden eyes made those pinpoints of light radiate as brightly as damned souls about to be swallowed forever in the blackness of hell. Then Erik had adjusted his deep red cape, not maroon like a trail of blood, but instead bright like flame, and had swept out of Box Five. The Baron had trailed him like a seneschal, trying not to step on that radiant train, but Erik was the faster one, and had quickly vanished.

An hour later, tired of circulating through the grand foyer, the Baron yawned with weariness and leaned up against a marble column. Erik had told the Baron that he, the Baron, would some time this night meet the ballerina Margaret Giry. The Baron vaguely remembered having seen her from far away, but none of the women who passed him by with curious, or appreciating, or deprecating looks resembled ballerinas. Nor did they appeal to him in any fashion. Their big bosoms spilled out of corsets or gypsy peasant dresses. They laughed like jackdaws when men stuck their faces into those tumultuous mounds.

Ah, here was one who was different. A slender woman, her face covered with both a black domino and a Spanish mantilla, stood alone, with her arms crossed over her small breasts. She twisted nervously back and forth, as if looking for someone. Was that she? But almost at once she grasped the arm of a white Pierrot, and pulled on him as if desperate for his attention. The two moved into an alcove and whispered, the girl still darting glances all around.

_No doubt she hides from her lover_, the Baron thought, and resumed his own weary search of the crowd.

There weren't even any boys worth noticing, only drunken louts from the cafés of Montmartre. He would have turned his attention to that one over there, whose motley tights shaped his long graceful thighs, but a woman clung to him. _A pity, all that beauty wasted._ The Baron turned away, suddenly overcome with a sick exhaustion which penetrated his soul. He had not thought that Erik would make him the punch-line of a practical joke, yet it seemed that had happened.

Over in the corner, the Spanish-clad girl covered her face with her long slender hands, while her friend in white appeared to be shouting at her. It was impossible to hear him over the din. The Baron reflected bitterly that he was not the only one playing the fool this night.

Over his simple evening black, his only extravagance was a silver cape. No domino concealed him. It had been Erik's demand. The Baron thought it a cruel one, to require that he appear naked-faced at this saturnalia. Everyone else hid behind scraps of silk, or cowls as anonymous as the executioner's hood. Then there floated past the elaborately carved faces of papier-mâché , painted with gilt, strewn with feathers. An ape grinned at him from a corner. Another figure wore two masks, one delicate as a woman's on one side, a thickly-moustached man's on the other, and for a moment the Baron felt a strange dislocation, as if he could not tell which was the front, and which was the back of the hermaphroditic creature.

It was time to leave, he decided.

An angry hum of voices rose like bees, and he turned to see what was going on. A tall figure draped in blood-red descended the stairs with slow deliberate steps. The man turned to the right, then left, then right again, his glance sweeping the crowd as if looking for someone. His deep-socketed glance played over the Baron without any acknowledgment, but the Baron himself choked back a cry. He and Erik were the only two who glared out bare-faced at the shuttered crowd.

He watched Erik descend the stairs, the same Erik he had met weekly in the dark little restaurant in the Pigalle, where they drank excellent Côtes du Rhône and talked. At first the man's unnatural appearance had sickened him with its waxy skin, the clay-like nose, the black-ringed eyes. But Erik had played chess well, knew wine, and like the Baron had a taste for Swinburne. The Baron's defenses dropped, and he told Erik about the inheritance.

His family had lost most of their ancestral holdings during the war of ten years past, as the Prussian invasion had left their eastern estates in ruins. Now in his early sixties, he endured the changes of life grudgingly. Only two servants left, and those he could scarcely pay. His brothers had fled to England on the deposed emperor's heels. A few years' of house arrest had padded their paunches and their coffers as they invested in arms and ship-building.

His brothers had died of gout and overindulgence, leaving a consortium to him of great value, with one condition. He was to marry.

_Curse the English inheritance laws,_ he railed to himself. But the hand of Napoleon never did reach across the channel, and so the choice was stark. Take a wife, or slowly starve. Well, he was here tonight. That must be a sign that he wasn't willing to starve.

The red-clad one passed by, and just before he turned out of sight into a side corridor, he raised his hand and gave the Baron a salute. The Baron nodded his head, trying not to tremble at the sight of that naked jagged visage.

Out of breath, still shaking, he clutched at his ascot and attempted to loosen it. The crowd came back to life again, sputtering and then roaring noise. Somewhere someone gave a quickly choked-off scream, and a few others shouted, but the Baron paid no attention.

For there she was.

Emerging out of the shadow as smoothly and neatly as chaste Athena came from the mind of Zeus, the girl walked around the bottom of the staircase, and sat down on an ottoman. The Baron adjusted his pince-nez and squinted over at her small dark figure posed poised and solitary. The great staircase horned as a womb sheltered her. He wanted to see how many men talked to her, or if she was a flirt. Against the pillar he leaned, and the party roared around them.

She stretched her long dancer's arms, blue-clad in the tight soldier-boy jacket. The snug red trousers hugged her slender hips and muscular legs. He knew her hair was black, because little strands escaped the cocky martial cap. She was either bound, or flat as could be. No men approached her, while a few women smiled or blew kisses. She ignored them all.

He suddenly felt naked, revealed. At their last meeting, the ugly man who called himself only Erik had sat silent while the Baron talked with wine-loosed tongue. Of course he would not marry, how could he? It had been many long years since he had given into temptation, but there was always the threat of arrest and disgrace. It's not that he hadn't loved a few women; he had. But to marry one of those creatures called "ladies," all hats and hair and hypocrisy, he could not. He would jump into the Seine first. And there it had stood, until Erik said quietly in his low bell-like voice, _I think I can help you_.

She sat now, crossing her legs at the hip like a man, and stared at her shiny black boot. _She is a line dancer_, Erik had said, _the daughter of one of the box-keepers_. _I think you will like her. But if I hear you have been in the least way cruel to her, I will find you and kill you slowly_.

_Is she pure?_ the Baron had asked.

_Her mother assures me that she is_, Erik had said, and his manner implied, _Question me no further_.

The Baron's reverie broke when she looked at him full in the face and pulled down the scarf that covered hers. Her chin was delicate but her eyes shone out black and strong. Her gaze held him all the way across the marble floor, perched on his hands as he took two glasses from a passing waiter's tray, and only let him go when he stood before her, trembling a little and wishing his hair were not so gray, his chest not so sunken. She smiled. He bowed.

"Champagne?" he offered.


	2. Test of Manhood

**Test of Manhood**

**A/N: ** _Thank you, __**ghostwritten2**__, for looking this over first. Warning: contains a violent and sexual slash scene._

The two older men sat at a table in the back of the dim, smoke-filled _brasserie _on a quiet side street in the Montmartre district of Paris. A chess set sat on the table before them, the pieces still in the box, or perhaps put away from a completed game.

The tall, waxen-faced one sipped from a glass of liquid clear as crystal, fresh as crushed peppermint. "Why is it always Persia, Baron? She asks me about Persia, and gives me no rest."

"She must love you, or she wouldn't ask. Women don't ask about the histories of men for whom they have no feeling," the shorter, older one replied as he caressed his scarf of fine cashmere. "I want to hear of it as well. Perhaps I too love you, Erik."

The tall man laughed, ragged claws scraping across metal. "Women ask, ask again, but never can you tell them the answers they seek, never can the truth be wrapped up in a tidy enough bundle to satisfy their tender sensibilities."

"Perhaps you underestimate her."

"Baron, you don't know her."

"Erik, perhaps it is you who does not know her. Introduce me to her – the Bal Masque is tomorrow."

"Never. You will never see her."

"I can see her on stage any time I wish."

"You will never kiss her hand," Erik said. "She is my jewel, one that I keep in a velvet case and take out for no man."

"How very Persian of you."

"Insult me further, and I will suddenly lose my motivation to help you with your particular problems. I've arranged for an introduction for you tomorrow night, one that I promise you will find to your liking. Be satisfied with that."

A waiter walked by carrying a tray laden with iced champagne. "Would you like some?" the Baron asked, noting the man's long brown hair curling over the tender nape of a winter-pale neck.

"With peppermint schnapps? Hardly. And why do you make an infernal pest of yourself by quizzing me about a country, about a time that is decades gone?"

"Because I see the light in your eyes when that name gets mentioned, and I have spent my whole adult life guided by those tiny mysterious sparks that flare up in a man, that illuminate the corridors into his soul."

"Be careful what corridors you tread, Baron," Erik said, and then sighed as he looked at the other man's lined face that waited so patiently. "Very well. I have a story for you, to give you an idea of what it was like. No doubt you think of the paintings of Ingres, of white-limbed beauties with waterfalls of waving red hair, lolling on marble poolsides. The Shah had women, dozens of them, but they lacked the fine features given them by the salon painters. Even so, he was protective of them. After I had lived in the palace for about a year, his chief eunuch, the one responsible for harem security, called me in to see him.

" 'The women ask about you again,' he said, disgruntled.

" 'I amuse them, and they are grateful for the opportunity to practice their French.'

" 'They say they are tired of having us interrupt your visits, that we make you leave before they are ready. Also, they suspect you of being a eunuch yourself.'

" 'Why is that?' I asked, although I already knew.

" 'Because you refuse to submit to Dr. Mansour's examination. Not that it would be enough, of course.'

" 'Of course not.' I knew that a superficial physical examination alone was sometimes not adequate to judge whether the castrating operation had been entirely successful."

"I'm confused," the Baron interrupted. "When my men clipped calves or colts on our old estate, there was no doubt everything was gone. How could that be unclear with a man?"

"Men are more delicate than cattle or horses. The Copts had perfected a means of castration where only the blood vessel was cut. It was done through a tiny slit, and the outer structure, the 'bag of life,' as it was called, remained intact. Many preferred that in their eunuchs; they didn't want them to appear marred, and there was far less chance of death. Sometimes with this technique, though, the vessels would regrow, and function would return." Erik sighed heavily again. "You see why I can tell her virtually nothing of Persia? It's all 'unfitting for ladies.'"

"Perhaps it is you who finds it uncomfortable and unfitting. It's no wonder she's curious. Everyone talks about the eunuchs of the seraglios, but women especially get very few details."

Erik stretched himself out to his full length in the leather chair, and went on. " 'Are you a eunuch?' the security chief asked me straight out.

"'Why is it important?' I answered.

"His moon face normally showed calm, however, now he reddened not with embarrassment but anger. 'Because the women in my charge are making a nuisance of themselves. When the Shah-in-Shah (long may he live) visits them, all they talk of is the French legerdemainist, whom our sovereign greedily reserves to himself.' "

"The Shah knows that I am always at his disposal. But this examination ... is it painful? Will it damage me?'

"He screwed his fat face up into what was probably a laugh, although it looked like a sneer. 'You know, Trap-door Maker, I have never liked you. You descend from Russia like a hawk and catch everyone in these talons of yours. You've even won over the Shah's cousin, that young newly appointed chief of police. I saw what lies under that mask on your first day, do you remember? I would say you are so damaged already that one or two more alterations won't matter. But never having had the pleasure of seeing how far your peculiarities extend beneath your robes, I reserve judgement. As to the examination,' and here he leered, 'Some find it less than pleasant. Some find it enjoyable. But I have never seen anyone damaged,' and he gave a knowing little chuckle.

" 'I wish an audience with the Shah himself,' I demanded. The chief eunuch fixed me with a look of hate, but did not deny my request. Fortunately Nasir was in Tehran at the time, even occasionally in the Golestan Palace itself, and the next day saw me.

" 'You must understand,' Nasir said to me, 'to the women, my building plans are unimportant. That is, until they want a new and more beautiful palazzo, or want to hear what their rivals say about them when they smoke the hookah together in a closed room. They think only of their own amusements, do they not? They want you to walk freely among them, although if you did, I think I would get no more work out of you, for they would engage you constantly in conversation and song and entertainment. I have explained time and again that you cannot, but they insist we find out for certain.'

" 'Why are they so unsure?' I asked, but I knew.

" 'Because while you have been offered women, unbelievers like yourself of course, you have consistently refused. The women don't believe you are capable. They know that among your own people the castrated condition is considered shameful, and that you would be accustomed to hiding it. They give me no peace about it and say if he is a eunuch, let him come in among us freely, and so, Lover of Trapdoors, I insist that you submit to our examination.'

" 'Not Dr. Mansour's?' I asked. 'I am willing to reconsider that previously foolish refusal.'

" 'There are certain inconsistent results of which the good doctor's observation cannot reassure us. Our examination is more thorough, and more conclusive.' He must have seen me flinch, for he said laughingly, 'Most men do not find it uncomfortable.'

" 'What is this examination, precisely?'

"He twisted his small lithe form around nervously. 'It's best that you not anticipate,' he replied.

" 'And if I refuse?'

" 'You prepare to leave the country tomorrow. I value your skills, but you have made good drawings, and I can pass them on to other builders. Seven women here call me husband, and by the rubrics of my faith I have to keep them all content. Then there are their sisters, their cousins, the concubines, the dancers ... Sometimes it is a great weariness, and I envy you Europeans your single wife, although not your depressing lack of sensual variety. Then, there is the consideration that my chief eunuch is responsible for all the women's safety, and if he is perturbed, if he is anxious, he cannot serve me as I require. That doesn't even begin to tell you of the complaining I hear from the Queen Mother.'

"So that's what was behind it, I thought. 'Why can't Dr. Mansour perform an examination similar to yours?' I asked him.

" 'Just as I submit to my faith, so does Dr. Mansour yield himself to his. As a follower of Isa and Maryam, he would find our techniques objectionable.' His face took on a faint expression of pleading. 'Were you submitted to Allah, I would not trouble you so. And you know, my clever one, perhaps you should consider the Path of Submission. So many doors would open to you here, and not just the hidden ones you insert into my palaces. I can find you a wife from among the faithful, more than one if you wish, beautiful women as fat as you like with lovely dark eyes and brows like ravens' wings. You can live here at court not as a servant but as a courtier.

"Nasir must have caught my expression of disdain. 'No, please,' he went on. 'Don't start in again on your face. I have seen it revealed and naked before, and to be honest, there are worse. When smallpox swept through Tehran a decade ago, there were people whose faces literally had melted. Skin covered their eyes and obscured their noses, so that they could scarcely see or breathe. Mansour told me that one man's member had practically separated from his body. So you see, my friend, we are not squeamish here. But if you are to stay, we insist on knowing whether you are a whole man or not.'"

"He sounds like the very devil of tyranny," the Baron remarked, refilling his glass from the mostly-empty bottle that sat between them.

"When he sat on the Peacock Throne he was supreme," Erik said, "but in the hands of the women and eunuchs of his court he yielded like clay. I asked him for a day to think about it, and he agreed.

"I lay awake all that night. While Persia would never be my home, I worked there, and everything I did was useful, everything I made was well-regarded. In France I would have labored for years as a journeyman under some master. In Persia I was my own man, master of my own crews. In Persia I could wrap this battered visage in a scrap of silk. There was no need for my false nose, no need to perfect the full facial mask on which I now work so that she and I can live untroubled in Paris."

"You've already told me the boys held little attraction for you," the Baron remarked. "So why not just yield, accept a woman, and be done with it?"

"I refused Persian women because for one thing, their looks did not appeal to me. Spare me that expression, Baron, the one that says I have no right to have any taste when it comes to women. Their squat forms and dark, beetlebrowed features held no charm for me, and I can assure you they would have held none for you either, although the beauty of their boys would have set you to writing poetry, as they did half the men in that country. But feminine beauty in Persia? It was not to be found. The 'little sultana,' the Shah's favorite wife, was supposed to be the loveliest woman in Persia, but were she to stroll down Hausmann Boulevard in Paris no one would look twice at her.

"Besides the lack of appeal, I myself had constructed listening tubes, walls that were not what they seemed, elaborately conceived spyholes. Given the court's ravenous curiosity about me, I fully expected my own tricks to be used against me were I to avail myself of a concubine. Needless to say, it was a bit of an inhibiting factor."

"I don't believe you, Erik," the Baron remarked. "Your explanation is too facile. Surely in that whole country there was one woman whom you could have found fair."

"Believe what you like," Erik remarked, offhand. "But I continue. To return to France felt like walking into a living death, so I told the chief eunuch I would submit. He rubbed his hands together and looked altogether too happy at the prospect, and I grew sick with fear. He brought me into a room, a little parlor with a large carved screen, and two other eunuchs joined us. All the castrati are unusually tall, and they are not all stout, either. One lean and strong one had his face set in a permanent mask of cruelty. He moved over to the door, guarding it with his arms folded. The other was enormous, a rolling bag of fat. The huge eunuch told me to lie down on the couch and remove all my garments below the waist. Trembling, I did so. He put his puffy, cold hands on me in shameful ways, and shortly his clinical gropings took on a caressing quality."

The Baron shifted in his chair. "Monstrous," he said, but his breath quickened just a little, barely noticeable.

Erik looked at him closely, marking his reaction, then continued. " 'The chief eunuch turned to the fat one, and said, 'Bring it here.'

"From a cabinet the fat eunuch drew out a long leather object. At first I could not understand what it was, and then I knew. I tried to leap up from the couch, but the lean guard was too fast. He pulled my arms up behind my back, and when I tried to kick the others, each one tied one of my legs to the settee, spreading them apart as wide as they would go.

" 'Don't worry,' the chief eunuch said to me with a leer. 'It won't hurt you. The women use them for their pleasure, so how bad can it be?'

" The lean guard chimed in, 'It would have been easier had he just taken a woman. Then she could have told us.'

" 'Who knows?' the fat eunuch said. 'Some like it this way. I for one am always happy to oblige.' He pulled my hips towards him and caressed me again expertly, sensuously, until nature's irresistible consequence followed, and I could feel myself given over to pleasure against my will. The chief eunuch first oiled the leather prop, and then myself in an unspeakable place, and before I knew it, it happened. Up to the hilt he thrust the object..."

"My God, man," the Baron interrupted, panting openly now.

Erik laughed the same ragged metallic laugh but his eyes were cold. "I cried out, I screamed, but they were relentless. The corpulent eunuch sweated, and his flesh shook from all his exertions. They laughed, they cheered me on, they remarked how they would like me to enjoy them under better circumstances. Then as I fell completely under the sway of that probing, thrusting club, they grew silent, almost awed. I cried out loudly and when I spent myself, it flew up in a long arc which they watched in fascination, and they almost forgot to collect in a cloth the incontrovertible proof that they needed. 'Then we would have to do this all over again,' the fat one laughed with relish, and continued to caress me even as I lay gasping and limp. They could tell the Shah that yes, I was a whole man, and thus barred from free and easy contact with his women."

He stopped his narrative, choking with emotion. "Barbaric," the Baron murmured, but he flushed with excitement, throbbed at the thought of this arch and arrogant man pulsing with helpless lust under the Persian eunuch's hands. He licked his lips. "What happened after that?" he asked.

Erik took on a faraway expression. "It was never the same. Having their curiosity satisfied made the women of the court gossip even more. I couldn't see their faces, but their voices grew more hostile, as if I'd cheated them out of something. It disappointed them." Then, as if he tired of the topic, he picked up a pencil and started to sketch on a scrap of paper.

The Baron swallowed through a throat dry as sand, and gulped the remainder of his drink. It burned all the way down. "It's not a story for a Frenchwoman, is it?"

Erik looked up absently, eyes like yellow coins in the lamplight. "I told her that stories of Persia would burn her like fire."

"Women don't believe us, do they?" the Baron said.

"No," Erik replied softly. "They do not. Perhaps when you make the acquaintance of Mademoiselle Giry, you will find her character to serve as an exception."

"One should be optimistic."

"She is a good girl," Erik said, suddenly all sternness. "You know the terms of our arrangement. She marries you and your family releases all your English assets. And you treat her like the empress she deserves to be." He glared at the long-haired waiter, then at the Baron. "Not one tear shall fall from her eyes because of one such as him, either."

A mist of cold descended out of the warm room upon the Baron. "Of course not," he whispered.

Erik's smile slashed across his white face. "It is good when men understand one another. A game of chess before we adjourn for the night?"


	3. The Visitor

**The Visitor**

**A/N:** _Written for a challenge prompt offered by_ **the_daroga**.

Mme. Sorel squinted into the afternoon sunlight. From her lawn chair she watched the horseless carriage pull into the pathway which led to her villa. Its sputtering engine wasn't loud enough to drown out the crunch of last year's leaves crushed under its iron wheels. A tall slim figure in black trousers got out, and Sorel shook her head in irritation. _Filthy stinking things_, _with all the smoke they spew out_, Mme. Sorel thought. _And she couldn't even manage to come herself, just sent her driver. As if the post wouldn't do._

As the dark-clad figure approached the villa's broad green lawn, Sorel almost dropped her lourgnette in surprise. In a sudden gust of wind, the driver's cap had suddenly blown off. Sorel watched not a chauffeur, but instead a lean, graceful woman who bent to retrieve it, then clamped the leather cap back down on short dark hair shot through with iron-grey.

"Baroness," Mme. Sorel said as she stiffly rose to her feet, suppressing a small swift despair at the ache in her hip. The little black-gloved hand was warm in hers, and surprisingly firm. "Welcome. I wasn't sure at first that you'd come. I suppose I'm too used to carriages and coachmen. Now it seems we women can be our own coachmen." Sorel didn't look all that happy at the prospect.

The Baroness Castelot-Barbezac hesitated for a second, unsure of herself but not showing it. Then she embraced Sorel warmly, wrapping her long arms around the astonished woman. "I never thought you would invite me."

Sorel removed herself gingerly from Margaret Castelot-Barbezac's embrace. "I've only set up housekeeping here a few years back. It's finally habitable. But I forget myself. Come have a cocktail, Baroness Meg. Something tells me we'll need one."

The gin fizzes were cold and the bubbles went the nose of Baroness Castelot-Barbezac, once called "Little Meg." After the second one, each woman pulled a letter from her pocket or reticule almost at the same time. "Let's see yours," Sorel said.

"You first."

"Very well. He asks for an audience. Wants to interview me about that wretched girl, I'd forgotten her name entirely until he mentioned it. The one who caused such a stink, and then disappeared."

Meg smoothed out the crisp creamy paper and read aloud, "'My recent conversation with your sister led me to believe that you could offer some further insight into the relationship between your late husband and the mysterious personage known to your family as 'the Opera Ghost,' or more succinctly, 'the Ghost'."

"What's that about? Those silly games you used to play with the other little rats?"

"I imagine. What else could he mean? Whatever we saw, or thought we saw ... anyway, they were just silly games, after all. We were insufferable, weren't we?"

"I should have drowned you all, like the rats you were. Anyway, I don't want to see him," and Sorel threw her own letter down on the table.

"What harm would it do, though?"

"Perhaps none, for you. But I'm living off my capital here, just barely. Any publicity and they'll raise my taxes."

"They can't do that," Meg began to explain in a patient voice, but Sorel cut her off.

"I'll have curiosity seekers driving their machines through my gardens. There will be photographers, and all that chaos will bankrupt me." Sorel wiped her lourgnette. Meg was so slim in her trousers. The envy stung, and she thought, _Well, she is a good six or seven years younger than me, after all._

"I suppose you're right," Meg said. "I suspect he knows more than he's letting on, though. In any event, he won't get anything from me unless he gives something first. And there were Antoine's, uh, I mean the Baron's diaries, not that I'd normally tell some Parisian journalist about those. There were a few mysterious passages, though, and perhaps he can explain them."

"So the Baron had secrets from you? That's news. If you don't mind me saying."

Meg's eyes gleamed like cool black spots of ice. "Of course he had secrets. He was more than forty years my senior, so how could he not? But that, no, the men were never a secret. Although he did have this friend before our marriage … No, not like that. This man he called 'Erik,' and Antoine didn't think it was his real name. What he wrote about him was odd, and I'll tell neither you, nor that journalist."

"But you will see him, it sounds like."

"Yes."

"I don't know if I can. Because, you know, he'll want to talk about ... that night." Tears gathered in the corners of Sorel's eyes, though none wetted her plump cheeks.

"Sorelli ..." Meg put her hand on the older woman's, and this time Sorel didn't shrug it off. _She looks so lost_, Meg thought. _She's been all over Europe, has danced her feet into powder, almost, and yet in some way she's never left the Place de l'Opera_. "There never really was anyone else, was there?"

The breeze had stopped, and it was suddenly very quiet. Even the birds stopped their chatter, as if waiting for Sorel's answer. "Oh, there were men here and there. I had to have someone on my arm or in my bed, didn't I? But no, no one else, not like that. God, why does he have to come now, wanting to drag all of it up? It was different for you. You didn't really love the Baron, did you?"

"Not in the same way, no. But he was kind, and a good friend."

"I'll tell that rumor-monger 'No.'"

"Of course. You don't have to see him. But just think of this as a possibility, Sorelli. No man is so dead as the one who lies forgotten. Tell the Comte de Chagny's story. You've told me a little, and always led me to think there was much more."

Sorel shrugged. "Who wants to hear about the old loves of an old woman?"

"I do," Meg said softly.

Sorel waved her hand aimlessly, as if trying to brush Meg's words away. Then, as if giving in after a long struggle, she rose and offered her arm. "Let's walk."

It wasn't until they reached the edge of the wheat field, soft green with tender shoots, that the two women drew close enough so that their heads almost touched each other, and they began to talk.


End file.
